Council approves bayfront changes

The Chula Vista City Council approved 60 pages worth of changes to the city’s local coastal plan that the California Coastal Commission “suggested” when it bestowed its long-awaited blessing on the Chula Vista Bayfront Master Plan.

Some of the changes made Sept. 25 are major, like lower building height limits to maximize the bayfront view from the freeway and moving a hotel site from a location near a wildlife preserve to one near the existing marina in Chula Vista. But many of them are relatively minor, like including in the final plan more details about the city’s proposed shuttle service for maximizing public access to the bayfront area, or disallowing an ice rink on the waterfront and specifically allowing boat rentals and swimming facilities.

All of the suggestions were already on the city’s radar and staff were in the process of complying with most before the Coastal Commission even formalized them with its Aug. 9 vote.

True to an earlier prediction by City Development Director Gary Halbert, the changes passed the council with no discussion and even less resistance.

The bayfront plan, decades in the making, has been heralded as a landmark collaboration among groups who normally disagree about what land to develop, and how.

Local land-use group Crossroads II takes credit for some of the changes, which resulted in “a better Bayfront Plan,” according to the organization’s quarterly newsletter this fall.

Jim Peterson led a “one-man crusade” against the “excessively tall buildings” of the condos local developer Pacifica Companies plans to build, Peter Watry wrote.

The original plan featured eight buildings of 10 stories or higher, the newsletter states, but Coastal Commission staff reduced the number of buildings to five and increased the “view corridors” through them.

The group lobbied successfully to get a separate pedestrian bridge across a lagoon just north of G Street, instead of combining pedestrian, bicycle and motor vehicle traffic on one bridge.

Crossroads II also takes credit for locking in a requirement that one of the resort hotels be a first-class hotel, in case officials want to put in “a Motel 6 or something” instead.

The land-use group says it also secured additional space for “active” parks, where residents can have gatherings, rallies, concerts and other public events, bringing the total active park space up to 20 acres, about 4 percent of the total 556-acre plan.

Finally, Crossroads II pushed to get a stipulation written into the financial plan that if the resort and convention center are not under construction or at least in the works 10 years from now, officials will start over on the bayfront plans from scratch.

Crossroads contributions included, all of the changes were the result of unprecedented teamwork, said the people involved in planning the comprehensive redevelopment of the waterfront property.

“Different interests have come together, and people have given up their individual, maybe more narrow interests, for the whole,” said Councilman Rudy Ramirez at the August Coastal Commission meeting that signaled a green light for Port of San Diego and Chula Vista city officials to go in search of developers. “I think because of that, the weight of that has given this plan momentum and carried it forward to this moment.”